Tuesday, 19 August 2014

Review: XBlaze (PSVita)

Are you new to the new BlazBlue
universe and want to indulge yourself into its world? Or are you an old time fan that is looking
for answers to BlazBlue's confusing timeline?
XBlaze is now out in the North American PSN store for both Vita and PS3,
a physical copy is also available for purchase.
There is no word for a European localization but Xblaze is import
friendly unless you don’t know how to read English all that well. Now let’s jump into the review.

Story

XBlaze’s
events take place 150 years before the events of BlazBlue, so it is safe to
assume that the Xblaze is within the same universe as Blazblue’s.There are terminology references to BlazBlue
in XBlaze but XBlaze is its own contained story and has no relation to Blazblue
whatsoever.

XBlaze centers on Toya Kagari, a survivor of a
disaster that wiped out everyone that happened to be in the vicinity of the
epicenter of the explosion.One day
after leaving his part time job, he happens to hear a ringing noise, the
ringing noise peaks his interest and as he tries to find the source of the
sound, Toya then finds that the noise is coming from the area that the disaster
took place 10 years ago.With the blast
area being gated, he finds a way in and sees a man that appears to be severely
injured.Toya rushes to the man and the
man then attacks Toya injuring him and as death seemed apparent, a small cute
girl named Es comes to Toya’s rescue.Es
then explains that she works for the Misturugi Agency and that there people
being “infected” by an element that causes the victim gain special powers while
causing them to go insane.Now Toya must
rely on his childhood friends, Es and the Mitsurugi Agency.

There are multiple endings that the
player might receive, in total there nine endings to achieve.All in all, XBlaze’s story is very
interesting and it makes it really hard to go into more detail without spoiling
the game.

Gameplay

With
XBlaze being a visual novel, the developers have to do whatever they can to
draw in an audience and give them a reason to enjoy the story the developers
created.Despite XBlaze having an
excellent plot, the game is very barebones.The story flows by itself with little to no interaction from the player.The system that dictates what ending you get
is called TOi, which is short for Technology of Interest.The TOi is the place that works like a news
application, where the player is able to read news updates on events take place
within the game. The player is also able to read the biographies of important
characters in the game.

Whenever there is a new article to
read on the TOi, a light blue flashes on the top right of the screen that reads
TOi.Depending on what articles you may
read on the TOi, the ending the player receives will change.The player is able to read all the articles
at once or choose to read only one specific article to change the ending that
the player will receive.This adds
decent replay value to XBlaze but it isn’t necessarily that good.The TOi makes for a very hallow experience,
while the developers came up with a decent path system, the TOi system is not
flourished enough and with a sequel already in the works, my only wish is for a
better thought out path ending system.

A warning that there is a game
breaking bug in the game that isn’t fixed unless you patch the game by
connecting to the PSN network.The bug
is easy to come across and happens fairly early in the game, the bug is what
caused the delay of my review.I’m fairly
content that Aksys was able to patch the game as fast they could but the bug
should have easily been found by Aksys and fixed before they shipped the
game.This issue can also be an issue
for any Europeans that may consider importing XBlaze, unless you are connected
the North American PSN, I strongly advise against importing Xblaze.Hopefully these type of issues are addressed
by Aksys more quickly before shipping out a broken game.

Art/Graphics

XBlaze is a very nice looking game
and appears to be very crisp on the Vita’s screen.XBlaze may or not be running at native
resolution but it really does appear to be so.There really isn’t much to say about the art or graphics part of XBlaze
as there is no exploration option like in Danganronpa or Virtue’s Last
Reward.The character designs are also
good and seem to be done by the same character designer from the mainline
BlazBlue games.XBlaze features a neat
dynamic view that makes the game more like an anime episode rather than a
Visual Novel.I really want that little
feature to be implemented in the future by Arc Systems.Overall Xblaze is an average looking game but
I can only imagine Arc Systems could only do so much on small budgets.

Final
Thoughts

XBlaze
overall is a fairly average Visual Novel but with its great SciFi like setting
and story it’s hard for a BlazBlue fan to pass this game up. XBlaze can be easily picked up by anyone not
familiar with the BlazBlue universe, because of the games self-contained story. Some may be put off by the fact that the endings
may be achieved with little to no interaction by the player. I advise to anyone who is looking for a deep experience
to stay away from XBlaze as you will feel like the game is way too shallow for
you.

7/10

Who should play this?

·Hardcore BlazBlue fans that are
looking for anything that may take place in the BlazBlue universe

·Visual Novel fans that don’t mind an
experience that requires little to no player interaction

Who should avoid this?

·BlazBlue fans looking for a game
that directly involves BlazBlue as Xblaze is a self-contained game

·Anyone looking for another Visual
Novel masterpiece like Danganronpa and Virtues Last Reward

·European importers as the game is
broken without the patch that is available only on the North American PSN
network.

4 comments:

Bought it and agreed, the TOEI system while an interesting feature in its own right is no substitute for a choice system. I agree with just about everything stated here and agree with the review score. Hopefully the sequel will be better.

Exactly, that was my biggest gripe, other than Aksys shipping a broken game. The story was pretty good in its own right, but I felt like I was watching an Anime movie rather playing a Visual Novel. My choices added no weight to the end game. I hope the sequel addresses these issues.

The issue is that the developers were trying to make an animeish experience out of this game. However if you have to stop to read the Toeisystem every time an article pops up, then the experience is ruined.